Phase 3 - Build

This phase is where you start building the service and releasing it for customers to use in a ‘production environment’. At the end of the phase you will have a working service, though still have important things left to do.
It is important to continuously release parts of the service and get feedback. If you don't do that, you'll be creating an ever-larger risk that the service won't achieve its aims.
This phase is unlikely to be useful if you are using off-the-shelf software.

Team and skills

During this phase, the team will experience the benefits of having built the team in the earlier phases. A highly engaged Product Owner will ensure that the right user stories are prioritised and the business’ expectations are met, and developers with a common understanding of user need will deliver better work.
However, the roles of the service designer and user researcher remain important to test and iterate the usability of the service. A content editor can ensure that the language of the service is also clear and that it is written in a way that makes it easy to find from search engines.

Governance

During this phase, you should be releasing iterations of software into a product environment at least fortnightly. This may take the form of a ‘friendly user’ trial or the soft-launch of a ‘beta’ version.
Where the iteration may have an impact on other tools, a change management request should be submitted to ICT’s Change Advisory Board, which ensures that change is well-managed and documented on behalf of the whole council.
If the solution architecture changes materially during the course of this phase, it should also be submitted to CAB.
At the end of the phase, you will need to request a service standard assessment prior to the service being launched or presented as fully operational.

Tools

The key tool in the building phase will be the user stories. Each user story needs to contain acceptance criteria detailing how it should work technically and what it needs to achieve for customers. In essence, the build phase is a process of working through each user story until it is ‘done’ and then moving onto the next story.
The tools which can help with this include: